Palm Jumeirah looks closer, if not for the colors 🙂

2 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

It shows the METAR of Al Maktoum airport (11 nm). The weather is the same... other angle, showing totally different visibility (I can't see the Burj Khalifa from here today, I can in the sim):

I prefer the MSFS image - who wouldnt want to see that far with a view like that! 😉 

What was the METAR saying at the time you took the photo?  Send in the pics via Zendesk so they can find ways to improve the prediction model.

17 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Another case in point of mixing AGL and MSL. Leaving Luzern (a nice rendition of LSZO by the way) in Switzerland. At that stage, the problem is not quality control, it is  basic supervision of collaborators. They are a bunch of bright engineers   but is there anybody in  the left seat ? Visionary blah blah to please the crowd has never been a substitute for management.

I am afraid that those praising the new haze, just take off in a cloud hugging the ground 😋

A strawman argument if any. My feeling is that there was, on the contrary, quite a large consensus to praise the new weather engine. Only a minority was  demanding to see in the sim what they saw through their window in real time.  They were flaws of course but the foundations seemed good.

Man, don't you ever get tired of your constant moaning and complaining?

And stop putting words into people's mouths: nobody was demanding anything. Leaving aside the vatsim issue, it's simply a huge immersion killer to look out the window and see one type of weather, then load into your airport and it looks completely different. 

11 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

I prefer the MSFS image - who wouldnt want to see that far with a view like that! 😉 

What was the METAR saying at the time you took the photo?  Send in the pics via Zendesk so they can find ways to improve the prediction model.

OK, I will do it.

The METAR was OMDW 210500Z 07006KT CAVOK 21/17 Q1016 NOSIG.

 

48 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

OK, I will do it.

The METAR was OMDW 210500Z 07006KT CAVOK 21/17 Q1016 NOSIG.

 

If I used just that METAR I'd expect to see what you got. I guess they could find a company that tracks smog or air quality and make a special cloud for those, in the future, but METAR won't usually help.

5 hours ago, VFXSimmer said:

Or did they find a way to add the Metar data as a weather front you could see in the distance around the airport without effecting the conditions immediately around your aircraft if you are still some distance away? 

The answer is "yes, kind of".  It wasn't Active Sky that was the limitation on this, but the sim itself.  There were certain weather phenomena that you could see in the distance as you flew towards them, and ones that you couldn't.  For instance, if you were approaching a cold front you could see the towering clouds that represented thunderstorms far away as you flew towards them.  But the sim had no ability to show you a distant fog bank; visibility was what it was.  So AS would very smoothly transition the visibility downwards as you approached a fogged in airport.  I suspect winds were global too.

But the important thing is that AS knew where the fog bank was and when you were entering it. If an airport was reporting 1/2 mile and and howling winds (think Halifax or Sitka), you were going to see the lights at mins while getting bumped around. 

With MSFS we have a sim that does have the ability to depict these distant wx phenomena as we fly towards them, so a wx engine like AS will be spectacular.

8 hours ago, WestAir said:

smog or air quality and make a special cloud for those

I was hoping someone would mention smog.  @MrFuzzy 's real life pics show smog which tends to be yellow or even reddish while water vapor haze is blue like a cloud's shadow.  Bubbles of smog are pretty common over cities that I've seen - unless the wind is way up.

5 minutes ago, sightseer said:

I was hoping someone would mention smog.  @MrFuzzy 's real life pics show smog which tends to be yellow or even reddish while water vapor haze is blue like a cloud's shadow.  Bubbles of smog are pretty common over cities that I've seen - unless the wind is way up.

Yeah, smog and dust from construction sites certainly contribute to visibility... I didn't think of that.

Smog is a great example of a case where using model data only would get things very wrong.  If the models see a strong ridge sitting over the SW USA, they'll expect Los Angeles to be clear and a million. In reality, after a day or two of that, it'll be 2sm if you're lucky.  Incorporating METAR data will capture that and ensure vis at the airports is realistically low. 

6 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Smog is a great example of a case where using model data only would get things very wrong.  If the models see a strong ridge sitting over the SW USA, they'll expect Los Angeles to be clear and a million. In reality, after a day or two of that, it'll be 2sm if you're lucky.  Incorporating METAR data will capture that and ensure vis at the airports is realistically low. 

Well, it should not be complicated to add a layer of smog above big metropolis, making it thinner during the night and on weekends... it takes tweaking but it's an art after all 🙂